I liked the first Discworld novel quite a bit, but this second book is much better. Where the first book meandered around without much of a overarching plot, this book keeps moving from the very start to a determined conclusion. The first book served its purpose familiarizing us with the world and some characters, and this book is the first real story.
Oh, and I love the humor.
I can’t get over the fact that the most interesting characters are Death and a very determined piece of luggage.
I give this book a 4, and that is because I’m trying really hard to stick to my personal rating system.
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My personal rating system for books, or rather my explanation of the stars I give books over on LibraryThing, is a 1 to 5 scale. Now LibraryThing lets you give half stars, which for me should be read as I was really tempted to go one direction or the other. That and if I only give something a .5 it means a special kind of disgust.
Let’s start with the good!
3 is a book that I enjoyed, but probably will never read again. All in all a meh.
4 is a good read, might read again someday, and generally liked a lot. Most stuff I read should fall into this category, I would imagine.
5 is supposed to be for outstanding books (like the first Harry Potter). That being said I really like giving 5s to books I enjoyed, and I’ll probably bump many 4s to a 4.5 just because I can’t control myself.
Oh, on the low end of the scale…
2 is a book that I got through but didn’t particularly like or took issue with.
1 and lower (if .5 and 0 are considered options) are for books I couldn’t stand to finish, were just horribly bad, or I would consider torture to have to read again.
I’ve given one book so far a .5, but I may have been a tad harsh… I’ve only scratched the surface of hard sci-fi and frankly I don’t think I had got it about that genre when I read that poor book. That being said I didn’t like it.
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To quote the author :
Retconning comes from “retroactive continuity,” meaning “taking the continuity of your storyline and retroactively changing part of it so things didn’t happen the way they happened”…
This comes up a lot in comics and sometimes in movies, where the past is changed to fit the needs of the current writers. Happens in soap operas too or any long form narrative that changes organically over time. At some point someone just can’t help but screw with the past we all came to know. The Star Wars prequels and the Special Editions can fall into this category.
Anyway I thought this article does an amazing job covering this topic. Really good read.
From digg:
In the context of Marvel Comics doing “the stupidest thing ever,” referring to the nullification of a certain webhead’s marriage, this article goes on to explain the different types of retconning. It explains how they come about and their repercussions.
read more | digg story
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This webcomic crossed my path the other day chronicling the author’s time working as a host at the Olive Garden. I also started looking at one called Starslip Crisis. Of course there’s also PvP and Penny Arcade… oh, the list never ends. Support these folks if you can!
From digg:
For about a year, I worked as a host in an Olive Garden restaurant. During that time, I made the following strips. Each strip is completely true, except for people’s names, which have been changed so that they don’t get mad at me. This comic is not endorsed in any way by The Olive Garden. In fact, they don’t even know it exists.
read more | digg story
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This book took me forever to get through. At 675ish pages (not counting the appendix), it has to be one of the longest books I’ve tackled… besides the Harry Potter books. I almost stopped about halfway… this is a library book and I’ve had it out like 5 months now. Luckily the Euless Library let’s me renew my checked out items practically as much as I like (I’m assuming I’d be stopped if someone put the book on reserve).
Guess I should get into the book itself. It was wonderful. Martin uses an interesting style in this book where each chapter is entitled with the name of the character whose point of view the story is told from just for that chapter. At the beginning I was scratching my head a bit, wondering about if I’d already read this or that chapter… but I caught on quick enough. Makes the perspective changes clear as day, but removes the traditional usefulness of chapter titles. He could have at least numbered the chapters, but he didn’t.
Martin seems to have a reckless abandon with his characters. I don’t think it spoils anything to say that major characters get the axe (or sword) a lot more often than most other stories I’ve read. The reader is left with the impression that in this harsh world anything can happen and throw your preconceptions out because the author plans on using those against you. I can truly say that the story changed directions towards the end of the book from what I had been expecting, and that made it really great.
I am left in a bit of dismay… this is the first of a series and each book is near the same size in page count. I hope I can get a couple more read by the end of the year.
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